Last night, Crystal and I went to the first class of a six part series for dogs that bark and lunge. Sonoma has, over the years, not reacted wonderfully to other dogs in an on-leash situation, especially small, white, fluffy dogs. She tends to pull on leash anyway, but with the added stress of meeting another dog, she tends to, well, misbehave. So we’ve done a lot of research on how to fix this behavior and have really tried a lot of different approaches. Our hopes were that taking this “Bark and Lunge” class (which, mind you, is way up 101 in San Mateo at 6:30 on Thursdays) would expose us to really solid techniques to change her behavior. After the first class, we aren’t so sure we’ll get what we need.
See, the problem is this. You can read books, attend classes, watch DVD’s and so forth, all geared towards helping your dog’s reactivity. And believe me, we’ve done all that. But the methods taught in these arenas are simply ways to distract your dog to avoid having an over-threshold reaction in a certain social situation. For example, let’s say your dog is fearful of skateboards. You’re walking her down the sidewalk and you see some kid on a skateboard coming your way, off in the distance. You use this time to prepare a treat or reward of some sort, and distract the dog as the skateboarder goes by. This distraction essentially forces the dog’s attention away from the scary skateboard and onto the delicious treat. But the skateboard is still scary! The dog still doesn’t know what to do when a scary skateboard is coming, and still doesn’t know what the best behavior is in an encounter with a skateboard.
We need a class that gets to the root cause of the issue. I’m an engineer, and part of my work is to find corrections AND corrective actions to problems. There’s an important difference between the two. A correction is a way to fix a symptom of a problem. If your dog is fearful of skateboards, a treat in the face will distract the dog from turning that fear into barking and lunging. A corrective action is a way to fix the root cause of the problem. The root cause in this case is the fear of the skateboard. People with dogs that bark and lunge need to learn to fix the psychology of the dog, the root cause. And unfortunately, this class at the Peninsula Humane Society is only adding to or (at this point) refining our toolsets for dealing in corrections. There’s an actual business opportunity out there to provide a class where you address the root cause of the fear and practice techniques to change the dog’s internal wiring. There’s Behavior Adjustment Training (or BAT) where you can teach the dog how to release their own stress by giving themselves space between the trigger (the skateboarder in this case) and themselves. They learn to keep themselves below threshold, instead of the handler forcing them to stay under threshold. Either way, the result is a calm, nice dog that’s not creating a scene on the public sidewalk, but the difference is the dog internally is feeling better and less stressed. The dog’s learning to cope with scary situations and could even possibly transfer the techniques to other triggers (bikes, cars, small fluffy white dogs).
We’ll see where this class goes. After all, it’s only been one class out of six (and the first was without the dogs present). We’re hopeful that the discussion starts to take a turn towards science and behavior modification, but using the first class as a baseline, the content is “fluff”. Otherwise, Crystal and I have been self-educating. We’ll fix Sonoma’s barking and lunging once and for all. As we do this, we’re becoming well equipped to help anyone else who’s finding themselves in a similar situation. And if we’ve learned anything from these other classes and books, it’s that we’re not alone.
